ERNEST CHARLES NELSON (1951-2024)

Distinguished botanist and garden historian, E. Charles Nelson was the author or editor of thirty- eight books and well over two hundred published papers. Born Belfast 15 September 1951, he was the eldest son of Robert G. Nelson of Enniskillen, County Fermanagh, and his wife Heather and grandson of Thomas C. Nelson (1888-1954), the Unionist MP for Enniskillen. He attended Portora Royal School (in 2016 it merged to become the Enniskillen Royal Grammar School) and subsequently attended the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, gaining a BSc in Plant Biology. Visiting his aunt Betty in Australia in 1971, he stayed to undertake postgraduate research at the National University, Canberra, where in 1975, aged twenty-four, he gained a PhD on the taxonomic classification and ecology of the endemic shrub Adenanthos in the Proteaceae family of Southern Australia. He returned to Ireland shortly afterwards where he secured the key position of taxonomist with the National Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin, just over five years after Maura Scannell (1924-2011) had overseen the transfer of the National Herbarium from the National Museum to Glasnevin.

Charles first came to wide attention among the Irish horticultural world when he joint-edited with the National Botanic Garden’s then director, Aidan Brady (1928-1993), the landmark book Irish Gardening and Horticulture in 1979. Always keen to promote a wider appreciation of Irish gardens and plants, he became actively involved in the Heritage Gardens Committee of An Taisce (founded 1974) and in 1980 was instrumental in establishing the Northern Ireland Heritage Gardens Committee (now Trust) serving as its first president and chairman, an organisation that remains very active to the present day. The following year he co-founded the Irish Garden Plant Society, chaired its inaugural meeting and from 1982 edited its journal Moorea, ‘devoted to papers on the history of Irish garden plants and gardens, the cultivation of plants in Ireland and the taxonomy of garden plants’ all subjects being very dear to his heart. At Glasnevin his office was conveniently close to the old library, so perhaps it was not surprising that Charles, a remarkably energetic researcher, would focus attention on the history of the National Botanic Gardens itself; together with Eileen McCracken (1920-1988) they published in 1987 a monumental study: The Brightest Jewel. A History of the National Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin, described in an Irish Times review at the time as ‘meticulously researched with a full list of references and sources and a superb and generous selection of illustrations’ of the ‘distinguished history of this delightful oasis’.

Until the early 1990s, he favoured the Kilkenny-based Boethius Press to publish his many books, subsequently using Edmund Burke, Strawberry Tree and Lilliput among others, while in print he always referred to himself as ‘E. Charles Nelson’. Whilst his manner was sometimes reserved, his engaging personality came out in his enthusiastic writings about plants and gardens, invariably colouring his text with stories about plant origins and people associated with them. Occasionally he was prone to amusing touches, as was the case with the ‘dramatis personae’ (p.xi) of his 1991 book Aphrodite’s Mousetrap. A Biography of Venus’s Flytrap, which he co-authored with Daniel McKinley; Charles clearly enjoyed the slang term for the Venus Flytrap ‘tipitiwitchet’ and from the 1980s onwards always used it for his home and email addresses. He worked well with other botanists and over the years co-authored quite a number of publications, including, in 1988, First Irish Flora: Synopsis Stirpium Hibernicarum by Calab Threlkeld co-edited with Donal M. Synnott; in 1994 with Alan Probert he published A man who can Speak of Plants, Dr. Thomas Coulter (1793-1843) of Dundalk, Ireland, Mexico and Alta California and in 2002 with his former colleague at Glasnevin, Brendan Sayers, wrote the beautifully produced Orchids of Glasnevin: An Illustrated History of Orchids in Ireland’s National Botanic Gardens; he had a particular love for orchids and twenty years previously had published John Lyons and his Orchid Manual with Boethius Press.

The same year, 1983, with Evelyn Deane he published ‘Glory of Donard’ A History of the Slieve Donard Nursery, Newcastle, County Down and again in 1998, also using the imprint of the Northern Ireland Heritage Gardens Committee (now Trust), he published together with Alan Grill, Daisy Hill Nursery, Newry. A History of ‘The Most Interesting Nursery Probably in the World’. His best known and most enduring co-authorship, however, was with the self-taught artist Wendy F. Walsh (1915-2014), who had moved from England in 1958 with her husband and children to live for the next forty-one years at the Glebe House, Lusk, where she developed a fine garden. She was in her sixties when her skill as a botanical artist became widely known following the reproduction in 1978 of her paintings of wildflowers on postage stamps. She and Charles became friends and together with Ruth Isabel Ross (1920-2016) they collaborated on An Irish Florilegium: Wild and Garden Plants of Ireland, a sumptuous volume published to much acclaim in 1983, winning a bronze medal for the 'Most beautiful Book in the World' at the Leipzig Book Fair. Later in 1988, on popular demand, Thames & Hudson commissioned a second volume, An Irish Florilegium II, which like the first volume, also had 48 beautiful hand-tipped colour plates. While these resplendent volumes stand out, their collaboration was both long and fruitful; their second book, being in paperback, was more accessible to the general reader, An Irish Flower Garden: The Histories of Some of Our Garden Plants, published in 1984.

Subsequent books included A Prospect of Irish Flowers: Ten Watercolour Paintings (1990); The Burren: A Companion to the Wild Flowers of An Irish Limestone Wilderness (1991 & 1997); The Trees of Ireland, Native and Naturalised (1994); Flowers of Mayo. Dr. Patrick Browne’s Fasciculus Plantarum Hibernia (1995); The Art of Flowers. National Botanic Gardens: Bicentenary Exhibition (1995); An Irish Flower Garden Replanted: The Histories of some of Our Garden Plants (1997); The Virtues of Herbs of Master Jon Gardener (2002); Wendy Walsh: A Lifetime of painting (also with Nick Wilkinson) and finally The Wild & Garden Plants of Ireland (2009) – in all a remarkable joint-oeuvre that has contributed enormously to our appreciation of Irish horticulture. A botanical artist whom Charles had long admired, but never had the opportunity to meet, was the remarkable Lady Charlotte Wheeler-Cuffe (1867-1967), known as ‘Shadow’; he included her in the 1995 Bicentenary Exhibition in the National Botanic Gardens, and in 2014 published Shadow Among Splendours: Lady Charlotte Wheeler-Cuffe’s Adventures among the Flowers of Burma, a beautifully written and produced book, lavishly illustrated with Lady Cuffe’s paintings. Charles loved to botanise and write about Irish wild plants; in 1992 he published Shamrock: Botany and History of an Irish Myth and produced a number of useful field guides, notably The Wild Plants of South-Western Ireland. Kerry, West Cork and Limerick (2001) and The Wild Plants of the Burren and the Aran Islands (2008). It’s well known that Ireland is not blessed with a rich native flora, but we can boast numerous garden novelties, many raised or propagated by our nurseries.

Over the years Charles built up an impressive database of around 5,300 Irish garden plants, which through the imprint of the Irish Garden Plant Society was published in 2000 as A Heritage of Beauty. The Garden Plants of Ireland. An Illustrated Encyclopaedia - an astonishing achievement for any one individual and rightly awarded the accolade of ‘Reference Book of the Year’ by the Garden Media Guild (formerly the Garden Writers Guild). This was not the only time that Charles would receive this award; in 2012 he achieved the same accolade for his Hardy Heathers from the Northern Hemisphere. Calluna – Daboecia – Erica. Published by Kew Gardens, this comprehensive 456-page book, when reviewed by the late Terry Underhill, found himself ‘sitting up in bed until the early hours of the morning captivated by various sections’. Charles was an active member of the Heather Society; he edited its yearbook among other roles, and in September 2016 was given the society’s Award of Merit. Some heathers are native to Japan, a country whose plants have had an unmistakable influence on the gardens of the world and a land that naturally attracted Charles, who in 2004 wrote a substantial preface to Levy-Yamamori, Ran & Taaffe’s richly illustrated and authoritative book, Garden Plants of Japan.

Aside from his many books Charles also contributed numerous papers to learned journals, such as The Plantsman, Curtis’s Botanical Magazine, Taxon, Kew Magazine, Orchid Review, and others, but also contributed to various society newsletters and popular magazines, such as Home Gardening and Field and Countryside and from its foundation in February 1992, The Irish Garden, to which he contributed to almost every issue for many years; a selection of some of his entertaining articles in this magazine were published as a book in 2009, An Irishman’s Cuttings: Stories of Gardens and Gardeners, Plants and Plant Hunters by the Collins Press. One journal to which he had a long association was the Archives of Natural History (the Journal of the Society for the History of Natural History) serving as its honorary editor from 1999 to 2012 and copy editor from 2013-2019. Also for the Society of Natural History, which was founded in 1936 to ensure good quality records were kept within its sphere, he compiled a Cumulative Index for the Biography of Natural History (volumes 1-9); co-edited with Duncan M. Porter Darwin in the Archives: papers on Erasmus Darwin and Charles Darwin from the Journal of the Society for the Bibliography of Natural History and Archives of Natural History in 2009 (Edinburgh University Press), and a couple of years later published the well received History and Mystery: Notes and Queries from Newsletters of the Society for the History of Natural History (2011, paperback).

In recognition for his tireless work on behalf of the society, he received a Founders’ Medal from the Society in May 2013. The following year, on behalf of the Glasgow Natural History Society, he published a biography of John Scouler, one time Professor of Mineralogy at the Royal Dublin Society: John Scouler (c.1804-1871), Scottish Naturalist: A Life, with Two Voyages (Glasgow, 2014). In 2015 in collaboration with David J. Elliott of the Catesby Commemorative Trust, he edited their book The Curious Mister Catesby – A Naturalist Explores New Worlds for University of Georgia Press. The Catesby Commemorative Trust has been reformed (2020) as the Mark Catesby Centre, University of South Carolina, and Charles was an (honorary) Senior Research Director of the centre. Considering his extraordinary research output, it is surprising he had time for many other things, but Charles loved to travel and botanise in various parts of the world and would lead botanical holidays to Crete and other parts of Greece.

His love of walking was also shared by his wife, Sue Robinson, a local GP in Wisbech, East Anglia, to whom he became engaged in March 1995. That year he resigned his position as taxonomist with the National Botanic Gardens, left his home in Phibsborough and moved to live with her in Outwell, a pretty town south-west of King’s Lynn in Norfolk. Henceforth, as an independent freelance botanist, author and editor, he continued to be tirelessly active. In February 2015 he was awarded the highest accolade: the Royal Horticultural Society’s Veitch Memorial Medal, granted to those ‘who have made an outstanding contribution to the advancement and improvement of the science and practice of horticulture’. A year later, on 3rd December 2016, the Royal Horticultural Society of Ireland awarded him their prestigious Medal of Honour, along with Helen Dillon and Thomas Pakenham.

Sadly, after nearly twenty-five years since their engagement, his wife Sue died of cancer, 17th February 2020. Following this tragedy, he moved house to live in Sutton St. Edmund, Lincolnshire and started to rid himself of his large photographic library of slides and many of his books. He nonetheless continued to research and write and in 2022 was joint editor with Elizabthanne Boran and Emer Lawlor, of the book Botany and Gardens in Early Modern Ireland, published on behalf of the Trustees of the Edward Worth Library, Dublin.

More recently, in October 2023, he came back to Ireland to speak at the well-attended annual conference of the Northern Ireland Heritage Gardens Trust, an organisation that he himself had founded forty-three years previously: the conference topic was on William Robinson, a man about whom he had published a book with The Collins Press in 2010: The Wild Garden by William Robinson: A New Illustrated Edition. Charles was in excellent form at the event and was looking forward to revisiting Greece the following spring, a country where he had botanised often in the past. Unfortunately, whilst swimming in Greece, he drowned, 20th May 2024. At his own request, his ashes will be scattered on the north coast of Norfolk. His sudden unexpected death has been a great shock to his family (he had three brothers and two sisters) and to the world of botany and horticulture. It would be difficult to find anyone in our history who has contributed more to the knowledge and appreciation of Ireland’s wild and garden flora than Charles Nelson - we are very much the poorer without him.

Terence Reeves-Smyth
Chairman, Northern Ireland Heritage Gardens Trust